There really is no fixing this. They cannot abandon all the art assets from this engine and make new ones. Thats expensive as TRIBBLE. And Wasteful.
Creating a new engine is way out of scope for the game and the already are trying to improve the current engine as best they can.
You should get used to the thought that this game will close its doors in th near future, once the new CBS trek series has either succeeded or failed. If it's a success, you can bet that CBS is gonna pull the plug here once thy have a new game in the works.
There really is no fixing this. They cannot abandon all the art assets from this engine and make new ones. Thats expensive as TRIBBLE. And Wasteful.
Creating a new engine is way out of scope for the game and the already are trying to improve the current engine as best they can.
You should get used to the thought that this game will close its doors in th near future, once the new CBS trek series has either succeeded or failed. If it's a success, you can bet that CBS is gonna pull the plug here once thy have a new game in the works.
Soo... do not spend too much money i guess.
upgrading the engine, is not making a new one.
most if not all engines out there, still share much of their predecessors code. from unreal-unreal 4, cryengine-cryengine 3, etc etc etc. it will be costly, but in the long run, for STO and for the future cryptic games, it's going to need to happen.
I always love threads like this. It's the perfect example of "Typical End Users!"
Come on cryptic! I mean what do those guys even do up there? Making a new engine can't be that hard, just a few 1's here and some 0's there right? Do some real work!
have I ever siad it wouldn't be hard?
it's going to be expensive, it's going to be time consuming. and yes it would require a large team again. but guess what, they can't keep using the same engine anymore, not only is it limited, but the old fashioned MMO's are not appealing anymore, so they have to expand. and that's just what the STO engine is built to do, be an old Fashioned MMO, that's what it was from the start. and past the shinies, it still is.
but in the end, upgrading the engine, will be worth while, at least according to the rate PWE is expanding, its MMO base in the U.S. (cryptic) will most definitely be beneficial if it can keep up with the technological demands.
There is a disconnect somewhere. If the engine is from 06, it should run FASTER on newer machines, even with the 64-32 bit issues it should scream right along. It ran just fine, after all, on those older, weaker machines.
The lag sources are not the engine. Either some new graphical effect is poorly coded (seems that way, post last update) or something like that is the culprit, not whether the engine is 64 bit or when it was written.
Which is not saying that the engine update is a bad idea -- I am all for it. I am just pointing out that the source of lag should not be the engine. New content poorly appied to an old engine, possibly, but thats a bug/coding error, not the engine.
eh that's not how it works, the reason it's chugging along is because they're cramming too much into the game to make it look good, while trying to baindaid their major issues.
and no, even if you've got a 64bit system, anything still running 32bit will be as limited as if it were released on a 32bit system. with the exception of some graphical increases. but even then it's marginal.
The only real advantage to writing a 64-bit application is access to more than 2 GB of program RAM for the application. That's it. But, then you lose compatibility with anyone still running a 32-bit version of Windows.
there's the thing......the vast majority of the market, 94% of the consumer based market are not using 32bit systems anymore, and very VERY few people are using 32bit systems to run STO.
alienating a small group of people who can probably get better hardware cheaper than what they got their original systems on, and still play STO, aren't a reason to hold back full development.
I suspect froma business point of view, it would make more sense to make a new Star Trek MMO with a more modern engine (such as Star CItizen's), taking all the lessons learned from STO, launch it, and then phase out the old one.
I mean, that could sell a lot of stuff to players in the new game.
star Citizens engine is a very heavily modified (not even sure if we can still call it this) CryEngine 3. and no goddamn way is PWE gonna shell out for the use of that engine, even if it's "technically" free with sales purchases. not to mention mmo games with cryengine suffer horribly from optimizations and usage.
from a buisiness point of view, PWE owns cryptic now, they own the rights to cryptics proprietary engines, they don't have to pay for a new one (which would cost more to buy, adapt, and recoup losses), they have the resources, and the staff at the moment to update the engine.
for instance, did you all know that Fallout 4 is still running the Gamebryo Engine? it's just called the Creation Engine now, it's the same engine, but heavily modified over the years. cryptic's most likely done most of the backwork already, updating it to 64bit alone would take a bit of time and employee sweat, but it can be done.
I don't think the game engine is a problem, it is more likely the excessive use of Space FX that forces many Computers to their knees.
Or does anyone seriously think that THIS is helpful or even informative?
I'd be happy if i could switch off even 50% of all that FX.
"...'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured...the first thought forbidden...the first freedom denied--chains us all irrevocably.' ... The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. I fear that today--"
- (TNG) Picard, quoting Judge Aaron Satie
There really is no fixing this. They cannot abandon all the art assets from this engine and make new ones. Thats expensive as TRIBBLE. And Wasteful.
Creating a new engine is way out of scope for the game and the already are trying to improve the current engine as best they can.
You should get used to the thought that this game will close its doors in th near future, once the new CBS trek series has either succeeded or failed. If it's a success, you can bet that CBS is gonna pull the plug here once thy have a new game in the works.
Soo... do not spend too much money i guess.
upgrading the engine, is not making a new one.
A software engineer or someone with knowledge in this area perhaps could help me on this, but as I understand it, there is no "just upgrade the game engine". It's either this engine, or a new one.
Now they can build off of this engine more, and perhaps get more out of it with software changes and extensions to which it runs off of, but the very engine itself cannot be upgraded. What you see is what you get, what you get out of it is up to how you can code it afterwards.
I could be wrong of course, this is not my area of expertise and it's been a very long time sense working for a software company, but this is something to what I recall being told.
Retired. I'm now in search for that perfect space anomaly.
It's not as simple as dragging and dropping the entire game code onto a new engine, it would invariably cause more issue's that it would ever solve. Not to mention every single bug fix would likely have to be revisited to make sure they're still fixed. As for upgrading the engine, well there's only so far it can be pushed before things start going seriously wrong. And at some point they could well find themselves with a unrecoverable error, is that what you really want?
I do not have any issues with the engine. I don't have the latest or the most expensive PC out there but frame rates or lag is not a big deal (at least for me). I know some have a real trouble with some aspects of STO. There are other solutions out there from the end user before the STO engine could be discussed. Read other forums and postings from what the end user needs to tweak. If your main issue is with lag and framerates your problem might be limited to your world geography...look up for extensive solutions discussed in the past.
If I have a major issue with the engine...there is an obvious choice. Move on and try a different MMO. STO will not even discuss that idea as shown in previous discussions. IMHO most of the issues you are addressing here look like an end user rather than a server issue.
How about a new game with an existing engine right now. That is not as extreme as building a new one from scratch. But I still see the OP's point here and have experienced it plenty of times running this game. The FPS sucks, even when it really shouldn't. Had to go to Direct 9 to play this game because Windows 10 and newer drives could not play this game at all. So something does need to happen in regards of updating the engine. This game anyway could still run in the mean time for a industry engine to come in and replace the existing one.
A software engineer or someone with knowledge in this area perhaps could help me on this, but as I understand it, there is no "just upgrade the game engine". It's either this engine, or a new one.
I am not a software engineer... I am not even a programmer, but existing game engines can be upgraded to incorporate more functionality. For example, Oblivion was the first major game title to drop support for DirectX 8.1. Fallout 3 uses an updated version of that game engine which was called Gamebryo. Skyrim is based on the Creation Engine and Fallout 4 uses a modified version of that same engine. From what I understand Bethesda licensed the Gamebyro Engine to make the Creation Engine, however only a small portion of the coding between those two engines are similar based on what I have read.
CryEngine 3 is based off of the original CryEngine, just like CryEngine 2 was basically it is an improvement of the old game engine. On the other CryTek stated that since "CryEngine 4" was built from the ground up as a next generation game engine, it is simply referred to as the "new" CryEngine to indicate the lineage between the original CryEngine and the "new" CryEngine has been severed.
Cryptic has a track record of plating up something "exciting" and "completely unseen" to sell to us then opening the lid and showing us just how crusty the skillet is that makes it.... and i'm tired of people defending them for being "small." Cryptic is NOT small. not with the wads of money they make on BOTH neverwinter and STO. no, they artificially remain miniature so they can avoid a BUNCH of legit criticism, just like how Warframe continues to perpetuate it's an "Open Beta." It's BS to avoid garnering bad press.
I think you overestimate the amount of capitol that PWI is allowing cryptic to use, much less keep.
It is said the best weapon is one that is never fired. I disagree. The best weapon is one you only have to fire... once.
no, gods no, it is significantly LESS buggy than its previous itteration, and as for it being horrible for a 2015 game.....that's somewhat debatable, it's got more than normal capabilities than what other engines have, and it's got VAST potential, however, they definitely (and even admitted) they had to cut corners in the art department, memory, and other segments so the consoles could run it. overall, it's a good engine which does what Bethesda needs it to do.
I am not a software engineer... I am not even a programmer, but existing game engines can be upgraded to incorporate more functionality. For example, Oblivion was the first major game title to drop support for DirectX 8.1. Fallout 3 uses an updated version of that game engine which was called Gamebryo. Skyrim is based on the Creation Engine and Fallout 4 uses a modified version of that same engine. From what I understand Bethesda licensed the Gamebyro Engine to make the Creation Engine, however only a small portion of the coding between those two engines are similar based on what I have read.
CryEngine 3 is based off of the original CryEngine, just like CryEngine 2 was basically it is an improvement of the old game engine. On the other CryTek stated that since "CryEngine 4" was built from the ground up as a next generation game engine, it is simply referred to as the "new" CryEngine to indicate the lineage between the original CryEngine and the "new" CryEngine has been severed.
The Creation engine, IS the Gamebryo Engine, it was just updated to the creation engine with vastly more support features. and now, the Creation Engine has been VASTLY updated, to not only support 64-bit, but even a whole other slew of features.
HEY!!i have a 64 and its totally rad and not uncool and its like totally futuristic its so way cool.
Ok had to go retro and talk like it was 1996 again lol
I do have a 64 and still play it, good machine and all for its time.
As far as the topic is concerned....How about a big hot steaming cup of ..Nope.
I'm pretty sure it's a myth that 90s people spoke like that back in 1996. If you went back to the future to 1996 and spoke like that, they'd easily figure out that you weren't from their time. Never forget what happened to Tom Paris when he tried to pull this routine on Sarah Silverman in 1996.
The problem with how horribly optimized STO isn't so much with the engine itself, more with the fact that the original devs who knew how to work with what's "under the hood" are no longer employed and the people who replaced them do not have such an intimate knowledge of how the engine works. I remember one of them referring to programming in STO as "like trying to untangle spaghetti", they're basically tacking things on with duct tape and baling wire so of course it's going to cause issues.
I think devs just need a code cleanup, optimize memory usage. It seems that game loves to create memory leaks, if framerate drops even on high-end PC. Building it from scratch again won't fix this.
Yeah, and that picture above... Rendering all this TRIBBLE can be a challenge even for a modern bucket of bolts.
The problem with how horribly optimized STO isn't so much with the engine itself, more with the fact that the original devs who knew how to work with what's "under the hood" are no longer employed and the people who replaced them do not have such an intimate knowledge of how the engine works. I remember one of them referring to programming in STO as "like trying to untangle spaghetti", they're basically tacking things on with duct tape and baling wire so of course it's going to cause issues.
that.....I did not know.......so yea, maybe a new engine would be necessary, unless they hire the old team back again.
it might explain why the majority of the performance and other stuff doesn't get fixed often.
How would this be any different from the steady stream of performance upgrades and art upgrades that we've been getting for the past few years? Is it just that we want these kinds of overhauls consolidated and branded?
You're not going to get a new engine for STO. By the same token, you're not going to get anything that resembles a new engine either. Replacing large swaths of code in a live game isn't likely to turn out well under any circumstance.
What you'll get instead are upgrades and incidentally coming up the devs are looking at ways of improving the UI and increasing its performance. We've also got more KDF character tweaks and mission revamps mentioned variously. Have more suggestions? Go ahead and post them in the art forum. You probably won't be given a personalized response from a dev telling you exactly when your forum post will be worked into their schedule, but that's not to say your suggestion can't possibly have an impact down the road (provided its sensible and well presented.)
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
How would this be any different from the steady stream of performance upgrades and art upgrades that we've been getting for the past few years? Is it just that we want these kinds of overhauls consolidated and branded?
You're not going to get a new engine for STO. By the same token, you're not going to get anything that resembles a new engine either. Replacing large swaths of code in a live game isn't likely to turn out well under any circumstance.
What you'll get instead are upgrades and incidentally coming up the devs are looking at ways of improving the UI and increasing its performance. We've also got more KDF character tweaks and mission revamps mentioned variously. Have more suggestions? Go ahead and post them in the art forum. You probably won't be given a personalized response from a dev telling you exactly when your forum post will be worked into their schedule, but that's not to say your suggestion can't possibly have an impact down the road (provided its sensible and well presented.)
This.
Whenever you hear a dev say they need to create new tech to do something, they mean upgrading/adding something to the game engine for it to work.
The devs have been upgrading it steadily for years.
A new engine is a totally different ball game, and would be cheaper to make a new game rather than attempting to port over the code/assets from the current one.
A new engine is a totally different ball game, and would be cheaper to make a new game rather than attempting to port over the code/assets from the current one.
Or virtually consist of the same thing, minus the new design, art, writing, ect. Another point to make is that at some level STO gameplay and environments are conceptually built around a certain set of engine limitations. Upgrade or change it out and keep everything else the same (difficulty of that aside) and you're wasting the most of the opportunity.
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Aren't they already constantly upgrading and optimizing the engine? Either way its not gonna get much better. There's a limit to what can be done with a game as old as this.
If you think STO is showing its age, go play DCUO.... seriously go play. STO has a ton more life in it than that.
Secondly, *IF* this were going to happen its already being worked on. More likely they'll milk this cow for another 2-4yrs before sunsetting it, possibly in favor of a STO2 with said new engine.
Or SWToR. Hell, Bioware took a BETA version of the Hero Engine, and modified it (poorly). Hell, the Hero Engine developers themselves put out a statement that SWToR SHOULD NOT be used as a gauge to the capabilities of their finalized version.
Or World of Warcraft - who's engine is going on 14 years old.
Or EVE Online who's engine is going on 16 years old.
In the end, the majority of players don't care overmuch about the age of a game engine, they care about if they find enough enjoyment from one or more aspects of the game content/mechanics to keep playing. If cutting edge graphics made or broke a game, WoW would have been running on one empty server back in 2010.
[Oh, and if you're going to counter with - well, those engines got some refactoring and upgrades over the years; remember, SO DID STO's <--- It got a graphical overhaul and Cinematics - and Cinematic tools update circa 2012.)
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Comments
Creating a new engine is way out of scope for the game and the already are trying to improve the current engine as best they can.
You should get used to the thought that this game will close its doors in th near future, once the new CBS trek series has either succeeded or failed. If it's a success, you can bet that CBS is gonna pull the plug here once thy have a new game in the works.
Soo... do not spend too much money i guess.
upgrading the engine, is not making a new one.
most if not all engines out there, still share much of their predecessors code. from unreal-unreal 4, cryengine-cryengine 3, etc etc etc. it will be costly, but in the long run, for STO and for the future cryptic games, it's going to need to happen.
have I ever siad it wouldn't be hard?
it's going to be expensive, it's going to be time consuming. and yes it would require a large team again. but guess what, they can't keep using the same engine anymore, not only is it limited, but the old fashioned MMO's are not appealing anymore, so they have to expand. and that's just what the STO engine is built to do, be an old Fashioned MMO, that's what it was from the start. and past the shinies, it still is.
but in the end, upgrading the engine, will be worth while, at least according to the rate PWE is expanding, its MMO base in the U.S. (cryptic) will most definitely be beneficial if it can keep up with the technological demands.
eh that's not how it works, the reason it's chugging along is because they're cramming too much into the game to make it look good, while trying to baindaid their major issues.
and no, even if you've got a 64bit system, anything still running 32bit will be as limited as if it were released on a 32bit system. with the exception of some graphical increases. but even then it's marginal.
there's the thing......the vast majority of the market, 94% of the consumer based market are not using 32bit systems anymore, and very VERY few people are using 32bit systems to run STO.
alienating a small group of people who can probably get better hardware cheaper than what they got their original systems on, and still play STO, aren't a reason to hold back full development.
star Citizens engine is a very heavily modified (not even sure if we can still call it this) CryEngine 3. and no goddamn way is PWE gonna shell out for the use of that engine, even if it's "technically" free with sales purchases. not to mention mmo games with cryengine suffer horribly from optimizations and usage.
from a buisiness point of view, PWE owns cryptic now, they own the rights to cryptics proprietary engines, they don't have to pay for a new one (which would cost more to buy, adapt, and recoup losses), they have the resources, and the staff at the moment to update the engine.
for instance, did you all know that Fallout 4 is still running the Gamebryo Engine? it's just called the Creation Engine now, it's the same engine, but heavily modified over the years. cryptic's most likely done most of the backwork already, updating it to 64bit alone would take a bit of time and employee sweat, but it can be done.
Yes and its horrible for a 2015 game . ^^
+ Its even more buggy.
Or does anyone seriously think that THIS is helpful or even informative?
I'd be happy if i could switch off even 50% of all that FX.
a charlie foxtrot!
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
HEY!!i have a 64 and its totally rad and not uncool and its like totally futuristic its so way cool.
Ok had to go retro and talk like it was 1996 again lol
I do have a 64 and still play it, good machine and all for its time.
As far as the topic is concerned....How about a big hot steaming cup of ..Nope.
A software engineer or someone with knowledge in this area perhaps could help me on this, but as I understand it, there is no "just upgrade the game engine". It's either this engine, or a new one.
Now they can build off of this engine more, and perhaps get more out of it with software changes and extensions to which it runs off of, but the very engine itself cannot be upgraded. What you see is what you get, what you get out of it is up to how you can code it afterwards.
I could be wrong of course, this is not my area of expertise and it's been a very long time sense working for a software company, but this is something to what I recall being told.
While playing with people who fire ultimates, and while doing so myself i personally have noticed almost no issues at all.
She hasn't played at all in 13 days, windows or card driver clash, some dx issue, we have no idea, every thing we do is a dead end.
She doesn't have lag issues because she cant even get in with this dismal 11.5 patch.
Cryptic as usual is nowhere to be seen or heard.
If I have a major issue with the engine...there is an obvious choice. Move on and try a different MMO. STO will not even discuss that idea as shown in previous discussions. IMHO most of the issues you are addressing here look like an end user rather than a server issue.
I am not a software engineer... I am not even a programmer, but existing game engines can be upgraded to incorporate more functionality. For example, Oblivion was the first major game title to drop support for DirectX 8.1. Fallout 3 uses an updated version of that game engine which was called Gamebryo. Skyrim is based on the Creation Engine and Fallout 4 uses a modified version of that same engine. From what I understand Bethesda licensed the Gamebyro Engine to make the Creation Engine, however only a small portion of the coding between those two engines are similar based on what I have read.
CryEngine 3 is based off of the original CryEngine, just like CryEngine 2 was basically it is an improvement of the old game engine. On the other CryTek stated that since "CryEngine 4" was built from the ground up as a next generation game engine, it is simply referred to as the "new" CryEngine to indicate the lineage between the original CryEngine and the "new" CryEngine has been severed.
I think you overestimate the amount of capitol that PWI is allowing cryptic to use, much less keep.
no, gods no, it is significantly LESS buggy than its previous itteration, and as for it being horrible for a 2015 game.....that's somewhat debatable, it's got more than normal capabilities than what other engines have, and it's got VAST potential, however, they definitely (and even admitted) they had to cut corners in the art department, memory, and other segments so the consoles could run it. overall, it's a good engine which does what Bethesda needs it to do.
The Creation engine, IS the Gamebryo Engine, it was just updated to the creation engine with vastly more support features. and now, the Creation Engine has been VASTLY updated, to not only support 64-bit, but even a whole other slew of features.
I'm pretty sure it's a myth that 90s people spoke like that back in 1996. If you went back to the future to 1996 and spoke like that, they'd easily figure out that you weren't from their time. Never forget what happened to Tom Paris when he tried to pull this routine on Sarah Silverman in 1996.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Yeah, and that picture above... Rendering all this TRIBBLE can be a challenge even for a modern bucket of bolts.
A simple solution: give us more FX to... disable.
that.....I did not know.......so yea, maybe a new engine would be necessary, unless they hire the old team back again.
it might explain why the majority of the performance and other stuff doesn't get fixed often.
How would this be any different from the steady stream of performance upgrades and art upgrades that we've been getting for the past few years? Is it just that we want these kinds of overhauls consolidated and branded?
You're not going to get a new engine for STO. By the same token, you're not going to get anything that resembles a new engine either. Replacing large swaths of code in a live game isn't likely to turn out well under any circumstance.
What you'll get instead are upgrades and incidentally coming up the devs are looking at ways of improving the UI and increasing its performance. We've also got more KDF character tweaks and mission revamps mentioned variously. Have more suggestions? Go ahead and post them in the art forum. You probably won't be given a personalized response from a dev telling you exactly when your forum post will be worked into their schedule, but that's not to say your suggestion can't possibly have an impact down the road (provided its sensible and well presented.)
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
is that spam or a constructive point?
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
About as constructive as the thread itself.
This.
Whenever you hear a dev say they need to create new tech to do something, they mean upgrading/adding something to the game engine for it to work.
The devs have been upgrading it steadily for years.
A new engine is a totally different ball game, and would be cheaper to make a new game rather than attempting to port over the code/assets from the current one.
Or virtually consist of the same thing, minus the new design, art, writing, ect. Another point to make is that at some level STO gameplay and environments are conceptually built around a certain set of engine limitations. Upgrade or change it out and keep everything else the same (difficulty of that aside) and you're wasting the most of the opportunity.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Or SWToR. Hell, Bioware took a BETA version of the Hero Engine, and modified it (poorly). Hell, the Hero Engine developers themselves put out a statement that SWToR SHOULD NOT be used as a gauge to the capabilities of their finalized version.
Or World of Warcraft - who's engine is going on 14 years old.
Or EVE Online who's engine is going on 16 years old.
In the end, the majority of players don't care overmuch about the age of a game engine, they care about if they find enough enjoyment from one or more aspects of the game content/mechanics to keep playing. If cutting edge graphics made or broke a game, WoW would have been running on one empty server back in 2010.
[Oh, and if you're going to counter with - well, those engines got some refactoring and upgrades over the years; remember, SO DID STO's <--- It got a graphical overhaul and Cinematics - and Cinematic tools update circa 2012.)
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."